The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

The face of a fiend

Things have been wrong in Rivers State for almost a year now, all for the wrong reasons. I say wrong reasons because a party to the Rivers crisis knows that it has no reason to be waging a war of attrition against Governor Rotimi Amaechi. Since February, last year, the state has known no peace. It has been one day, one crisis in the Garden City all because some people in Abuja are no longer comfortable with Amaechi being in the saddle.

But must Rivers and the people be made to suffer because of the perceived ‘sins’ of one man? That is assuming if he has done anything wrong. At the risk of being accused of bias, I say that the governor has done nothing wrong, except if it is a sin to stand up for what one believes in. Amaechi may have offended them without knowing when he complained that the East – West Road is a death trap because of the delay in completing it!

For his boldness in calling a spade a spade and not a farming implement he incurred the ire of Niger Delta Minister Godsday Orubebe, who started the campaign that Amaechi was criticising the project because he was interested in the 2015 presidential election. When Amaechi moved to the Port Harcourt Waterfront in his bid to beautify the place, all hell broke loose. They accused him of demolishing houses without sparing a thought for the owners.

Most of the house owners are Okrika, who have a powerful kinswoman in the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan. When she visited Port Harcourt sometime last year, she took on Amaechi over the issue. Her Excellency accused Amaechi of demolishing houses without compensating the owners. The governor, she said, knew no other word than ”demolish, demolish”, adding : ”If you demolish everywhere, where will the people go”.

That was the start of Amaechi’s problem with the first family as Dame Patience rebuffed every move by the governor to explain things. She denied him every right of reply. Since then, there has been no love lost between them. Dame Patience is being fussy over nothing. As the mother of the nation and the most prominent Rivers woman in high office today, there are better ways of handling issues, especially those pertaining to her state.

And that is not by being hostile to the governor. As we have said here in the last two editions, there are better ways of relating with the governor of your state, whether you are wife of the president or not, Respect, they say, begets respect. If the first lady does not throw her weight around, she and Amaechi will hit it off. But if she chooses to be bossy as she is now doing, things will not work at all and Rivers will be the worse off for it. We are already experiencing that with the kind of Commissioner of Police she got posted to the state. Since his coming, Mbu Joseph Mbu has not left people in doubt about his mission.

From all indications, Mbu is executing someone’s agenda and since he was deployed in Rivers on the instrumentality of the first lady, it is obvious on whose side he is. This Joseph is unlike his namesake in the Bible, who won Pharaoh’s heart by his fortrightness and candour. The biblical Joseph was a great dreamer and an interpreter of dreams, but the Jonathans’ Joseph is a killer of dreams and a perpetrator of havoc. He should, however, not forget that there may come a Pharaoh (even though Jonathan once said he is neither Pharaoh nor a General) who does not know his Joseph. If it could happen in the Bible, it can also happen here. May we remind Mbu that he is a law officer, who should be impartial where there is a dispute between two parties. It is sad that Mbu has not lived up to the expectations of his office. He seems to have forgotten that he owes his commission to the Nigerian people and not to any public officer, who will leave office one day.

Mbu too will eventually leave office, but what will be his legacy, if he continues to run the Rivers State Police Command the way he is presently doing? I don’t know how long he still has left in service, but if he wishes to go further in his career, he has to change his ways, except if he is saying that he is satisfied being a commissioner until he retires. It is high time Mbu stopped seeing himself as a major-domo of the first family and act truly as an officer of the law, who will uphold what is right and just.

If the truth must be told, Mbu has not been fair to the Save Rivers Movement (SRM) and Amaechi so far. While he is treating the Nyesom Wike – backed Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI) with kid glove, he is applying iron hand on the SRM because the group enjoys the support of Amaechi, who does not see eye to eye with the first family. Is that how to be a police officer? Mbu knows the answer to this poser. The police pride themselves in being the people’s friend. Unfortunately, we cannot say that of Mbu going by what we have seen of him; we will rather remove the r in that word and see him more as a fiend.

Isn’t that what he really is? If a police chief like him can stand idly by and allow hoodlums to attack law abiding citizens as it happened in Port Harcourt last Sunday during the SRM planned rally can he be said to worth his uniform? If a police chief like him can sanction the use of force, whether minimum or maximum, to disperse a proposed peaceful rally can he be said to be fit for that post? The world once had a butcher of Baghdad – the late Saddam Hussein of Iraq – who ran his country with an iron fist, but we all know how he ended.

At the height of the late Hussein’s madness, life meant nothing to him; he killed people at will, including his son-in-law because he was power drunk. The Arab world surely has them. Today, Bashar Assad of Syria is following in the late Hussein’s footstep. Are these Mbu’s role models? I am sorry to say that he is treading the path of perfidy if he does not retrace his step. What I don’t understand is why the police chose to look the other way when hoodlums descended on SRM members on Sunday? Is it no longer their job to protect life and property?

Up till now, the Inspector – General of Police (IG) has not queried Mbu on what happened? Is that how to run an institution? We can only hazard a guess here that the IG’s hands are tied because Mbu is well connected. But what do we say of President Goodluck Jonathan, the apostle of peace, who has deafeningly kept silent in the face of the mayhem in Port Harcourt last Sunday? Yet, the president says he does not want people to shed blood over his political ambition.

How do we reconcile his statement with what is happening in Rivers? Now, Amaechi has served notice that he would be at the rescheduled SRM rally in Port Harcourt on Saturday. As the chief law officer of his state, the goverrnor’s movement cannot be curtailed by anybody. He is expected to be protected by virtue of his office. Will Mbu provide Amaechi that protection on Saturday or will he let loose his men again on defencelsss citizens? Those who love Mbu should advise him to retrace his step now because the end of yes – men is not always something to cheer about.

January 23, 2014
Armchair Trotskys (2)

There is nothing more pathetic than a critical mob; gangs of columnists, journalists, hatchet writers and career critics may stir up strife but their efforts eventually pass like the hum of mosquitoes seeking to make a noise like thunder. Like the rest of the Nigerian mob, the social media critic, newspaper columnist and journalist symbolize a tiresome mercenariness of complacency, avarice and inertia. However, unlike the rest of the Nigerian mob, this critical mob epitomizes the tragic manifestations of the pious frauds of citizenship, like microbes hastening the decomposition of corpses.

Nigerians love being conned and the Nigerian ruling class knows that; so does the Nigerian critic. The latter knows that, if you can deceive the citizenry in grand and entertaining styles, you will get away with it more often than you could count thus the continual deception, impoverishment and murder of the Nigerian masses.

Like the masses or totality of the Nigerian mob, the critic suffers exposure to pain and humiliation for too long in the hands of the ruling class thus ending up in a pitiful state evocative of a condition of enthrallment in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer. Careful observation would however, suggest that foremost crusaders of the critical mob variously suffer paralysis of the intellect as does every hypnotized subject; consequently, the latter becomes enslaved to an object, a need, money, a perversion or an idea by which the hypnotizer (oftentimes the ruling class) directs and belittles him at will.

It’s a shame that I belong to the journalistic segment of this pathetic societal divide; as a journalist and newspaper columnist cum social critic, I am not in any way distinguishable from the rot emblematic of my colleagues in the Fourth Estate of the realm. However much I try to absolve myself of blame; the society is wired to see us all journalists as a bunch of unrepentant liars, pawns to tyrants and die-hard fortune hunters.

We essentially epitomize a style of living which cultivates sincerity and is at the same time a fraud. We arrogate to ourselves rights to nobility and free speech by twisting truth into relative truths and true lies in an existence we have learnt to rationalize as gracious and irrevocably necessary. This has to be odious; it is.

Despite the cowardice and duplicity of Nigeria’s critical mob, it is amusing to see other constituents of this mob divide tirelessly chastise and identify the Nigerian journalist as a bane to progress and monumental disgrace to the society. To this, many a journalist and newspaper columnist have responded that the society essentially wishes that the journalist do not effectively fulfill his responsibilities to it. Likewise, I have corroborated such argument claiming that big business and politicians’ ownership of mainstream media gives them intimidating capacities to influence and set the agenda for the media and society in general.

This is an intimidating reality no doubt; it is obscenely silly and self-serving of the Nigerian society to continually muscle in the media’s job and prevent it from discharging its duties effectively and yet turn around to identify the Nigerian press as fraudulent and disgraceful.

However, this does not in any way ennoble the shamefulness and irresponsibility of the Nigerian press. Journalists, unlike the social media critic, delusional citizen or online journalist, press secretary or special media adviser to the ruling class, are expected to fulfill more sensitive and crucial roles to the society.

The Nigerian journalist should be the hero that perpetually cramps himself into demanding roles of watchdog. It is shameful however, that the contemporary journalist takes unpardonably dense and gruesome human elements for gods and worships them as such; by enslaving himself to such characters, the journalist is duly taken for some idle, nondescript human integer, extant in the world to entertain tyranny and have a few naira and demeaning errands thrown at him that he might get to enjoy a taste of the good life or a semblance of it.

Be it as Special Media Adviser to the President, Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Personal Assistant to the MD, Corporate Affairs Manager or any other title created for an enslaved press intellectual within public or private sector, the journalist shirks his role as societal watchdog; he becomes lapdog, dung-dog or junkyard dog of the ruling class. In the strict slave system in which he works, there can scarcely be such a thing as crime; whatever his principal does is fair and justifiable – his ultimate aim is to keep his employer happy and thus guarantee the security of his meal ticket. It is no surprise therefore that the journalist and newspaper columnist who ought to serve as a check on the bestiality and excesses of the ruling class eventually become the defender and justifier of such vile.

Those who are not yet lured into the loop of schemes and largesse of the ruling class painstakingly become gadflies to the ruling class. They taunt and condemn every measure, utterance and action of the country’s leadership in desperate bid to bully whatever government excites their greed and duplicity till they include them as recipients of crumbs of the proverbial “national cake.”

As crucial appendage of Nigeria’s critical mob, the press has mutated into a contemptible factor, trollopy in conduct and pitifully cast in the stormy waters of Nigeria’s sociopolitics. Far flung in the murky waters, many have drowned, a paltry few struggle to swim against the tides while many more hang suspended, to be forced up or down by the chance currents of a sleazy, vicious world. How can such human elements fulfill the roles of watchdog and moral compass of the society?

For too long, the Nigerian journalist has tirelessly fulfilled the role of criminal constituent amid the nation’s critical mob divide. So doing, he becomes blamable for every ill and any ill symptomatic of the country’s steady descent the slope of amorality and currency-activated self-destruct.

What is however, true of the journalist is peculiarly true of other human elements of the Nigerian society; contemporary happenstances attest to the fact that the current generation of Nigerians, the youth in particular, is afflicted by an intense tumult of self-interest, gluttony and intricate trashing of spirit that destroys whatever nerve could be mustered in pursuit of truth, personal and societal progress.

Poverty and job insecurity are ascribed as our reasons for betrayal; true, the society betrays the journalist by the hour but it’s about time we stopped repaying perfidy with perfidy. It’s about time we evolved dependable and practicable means of creating and instituting a leadership, society and media practice we could trust.

We could begin by ditching our familiar whining and blame-mongering to evolve a culture of truthfulness and conscientious citizenship. It is no longer permissible to contend that the journalist is only a reflection of the society he serves. By advancing such argument, we box ourselves into straits of sophistry and frantic rationalizations. This is unacceptable of purported men of letters and conscience of the society.

Truth is what we should speak. Truth is what we should be guided by. But what manner of truth should be the watchword of the Nigerian journalist?

• To be continued…

January 17, 2014
With a friend like police

What is happening in Rivers State brings to mind the blood-chilling developments in the polity during the Second Republic. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was in power and to rein in the opposition, the party resorted to jackboot tactics. It seized control of the police and turned the institution into a tool for hunting and hounding law abiding citizens. With the Asiwaju of Ogbomoso in Oyo State, Sunday Adewusi, as Inspector – General, the police played their role well.

The police even overdid things in the bid to serve their master. They overreached themselves in killing, maiming or arresting and hunting down those perceived to be the enemies of the government. They lacked nothing in doing their job. Where the military, the constitutional protector of the nation’s territorial integrity, lacked the wherewithal to discharge their duties, the police had everything. They had, among others, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), which were deployed in some streets to instil fear in the populace. Yet, the police say they are our friend. With a friend like them, who needs an enemy?

These APCs were just there to show the opposition that the government has what it takes to checkmate them if they fell out of line. Falling out of line does not necessarily mean that you may have done something wrong, it is something defined by the police and NPN. They have their own definition of falling out of line and that is ”undue criticism” of the presidency or slawarts of NPN on whose pay roll many police officers were. The height of it all was the use of the police to rig the 1983 elections, which eventually led to the sacking of the Alhaji Shehu Shagari – led PDP government.

Thirty years after, we are walking the same road again. The police have always been a spoiler in the political history of our country. They seem to enjoy supporting those in power forgetting that they are an institution, which should uphold what is right and do justice to all men, whether political heavyweight or not; whether rich or poor. Our police like taking the easy way out. They prefer being on the side of those who have the power to determine their fate rather than discharge their duty without fear or favour.

It is because of fear that the inspector – general (IG) will turn his face the other way when those in power are trampling upon the rights of the citizens. The IG knows what is right but will not act out of fear. Why then is he the IG? This shows how timid our policemen are. It is because of their timidity that those in power order them around as if they are servants. No, the police are nobody’s servant. They are officers of the law, who deserve the respect of both the prince and the pauper. Unfortunately, the police have sold themselves to the powerful and mighty.

They foam from the mouth at the sight of these people. It is as if their lives depend on the say so of politicians and the powerful. That is how cheap the police have become and nothing attests to this fact than what is playing out in Rivers

State, where the Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, has turned himself into a tin god. Mbu is today the most powerful police officer because of the special job he is doing for the first family in that state. His brief is to make life difficult for Governor Rotimi Amaechi and he seems to be on a roller coaster.

He has even done more than he was asked to do. Yet, he is not tired. Did you hear what he said after Sunday’s shameful display by the police during which Senator Magnus Abe was shot? Boasting on Channels Television during the station’s primetime news, Mbu said : ”If we used live bullets, you know the implication. If a live bullet hits your hand, it will shatter the hand and if it hits the neck, the person is gone…I asked policemen to subdue and take over the place (venue of the planned rally where Senator Abe was shot)”. For effect, he added that the rally, where Governor Amaechi formally declared for the All Progressives Congress (APC), was held without police approval, but the police just looked the other way.

Mbu was saying in effect that he could have also shot at and teargassed those who attended that rally, among who were former Head of State Gen Muhammadu Buhari, former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu and APC Interim National Chairman and former Osun State Governor Bisi Akande, but was restrained by forces beyond his control! That would have been the height. But, he could not carry out his heart’s desire because even a mad man knows where to stop. Mbu, who from his name may be from the popular Mbu family of Cross River State, has become a terror of sorts in police uniform. He should stop dragging the name of that poular family in the mud.

He has become so powerful because he has the ears of the president and his wife. I will not be surprised if he no longer takes his orders from the IG, but from the Presidency. He should not allow his closeness to the first family to becloud his professional sense of judgement. What did those who gathered at the Rivers State College of Arts and Science on Sunday for a Save Rivers Movement (SRM) do wrong? When did it become illegal to hold rallies? Is Mbu, a whole police commissioner, unaware of a court verdict that people can gather without police permit?

Mbu should be called to order before he does further havoc. He has shown us the kind of officer he is – an officer who can shoot at will in order to satisfy his paymasters. Little wonder, we have so many cases of extra judicial killings involving the police. It is a terrible thing that someone like Mbu is heading a state command. Now, they have sent him to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru near Jos, Plateau State, when he should be asked to go. Let him remember that the Jonathans will not be in office forever.

So long, Tukur!

Today, the fate of Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Bamanga Tukur will be determined. Will he remain as PDP chair or will he be removed? The signs are that he may be removed. Tukur had since lost out as PDP chair, but was being sustained in office by President Goodluck Jonathan, who still had good use for him then. Now, he has to go, as predicted by this column on January 2. Tukur’s cup is full. Will he be able to summon courage and throw in the towel rather than wait until he is removed with ignominy if he insists on following due process? How many of his predecessors left office under due process? None. So, how does he expect his case to be different?

January 16, 2014
Why Nigeria is falling apart – 2

I ended my first article on this subject last week thus: “From 1952, the federation of three regions went into effect. Each region had considerable freedom to manage its own affairs, and each achieved a lot for itself. But the British had different ultimate arrangements in mind. They wanted to put in charge of Nigeria a people whom they believed they could trust to protect British interests after independence and, having decided that the Hausa-Fulani of the North (who were afraid of the vastly more literate southerners) would do that, they proceeded to twist the Nigerian federation in order to make it virtually a Hausa-Fulani “empire”. The foundation was thus laid for conflicts, decline and ultimate disintegration of Nigeria”.

It is that scheme that has been playing out since independence – the scheme of one large nationality (but yet a minority among all the people of Nigeria), regarding Nigeria as their “empire”, and striving doggedly to mastermind and control all the affairs of Nigeria through their control of the powers of the federal government. The details of this striving are very well known to most Nigerians – the strategizingto hold on to the control of the federal government through northern civilian or military regimes, the alternate uses of election rigging and military coups as tools for the changing and installing of governments, the use of election rigging by federal agencies to impose and sustain vassals in our states, the use of the secret service and other security agencies to intimidate and suppress resistance or dissent, the creative employment corrupt enrichment of individuals to undermine, emasculate, and subdue the elites of other parts of Nigeria, and the ruthless enforcement of the strange claim that all resources in all parts of Nigeria belong to, and should be controlled by, the federal government.

All Nigerians know, and live with, the disastrous outcomes of these ways of running the affairs of their country. At independence our Nigeria was a land of hope and pride, a country that the world viewed with great expectations. Today, our country is a battered and broken entity on the verge of total collapse. An overwhelming majority of our citizens, in all regions of our country, are reeling in poverty and hopelessness. The more literate peoples of the south who were poised for great steps forward at the time of independence have all been crushed into poverty and hopelessness. Even the peoples of the north, on behalf of whom the northern elite claim to seek domination of Nigeria, are horrendously poorer today than at the time of independence. The north was beginning, as at independence, under Sir Ahmadu Bello’s highly respectable leadership, to make impressive economic and social progress. In a group of youths visiting the Northern Region from the Western Region in 1961, I had the privilege of visiting this great Nigerian and premier of the North in his office, and of listening to him for a few minutes as he told us, his sons, what he was doing for the people of our Northern Region. I left his presence very proud of him, and very proud of my country and myself. Now, the North is sunk, and sinking deeper and deeper, in poverty; and countless youths of the North are reacting to their hopelessness by giving their energies to callings that are dedicated to destroying and killing.

We who know these things must never cease screaming them from the roof-tops. The people who have presumed since independence to own the privilege of ruling and controlling Nigeria have been wrecking Nigeria. Their policies and actions are now on the verge of wiping Nigeria off the map completely. The destructive tradition of governance that they have foisted on our country is so powerful (powerful because of its irresistible appeal to the worst in human nature) that merely changing the personnel of our governments will never change anything.

The Obasanjo and Jonathan presidencies are proof beyond doubt that no matter what part of Nigeria our presidents comes from, we will never get any positive change in the way our country is being run and wrecked. Obasanjo emanates from a Yoruba nation with strong ancient traditions of government based on the power and will of the people. Hardly any Yoruba citizen who has commented on the Nigerian federal structure has failed to ask for a rational federal structure based on Nigeria’s nationalities. In fact Obasanjo himself, in 1998, the year before he became president, wrote a book in which he advocated that the next Nigerian constitution must include clauses spelling out how nationalities that want to secede from Nigeria may do so peacefully. Jonathan comes from the most pitiful corner of Nigeria – the corner that produces all of Nigeria’s wealth and is the most viciously neglected, the most sickeningly pauperized. Jonathan’s brothers and cousins have been resisting this injustice since independence – and giving their lives (some of Nigeria’s most promising lives) to the fight. Yet when Obasanjo or Jonathan came to the presidency, each immediately began to wallow in the excesses of power, money and resources at the disposal of his position. Widely known to be indigent by 1998, Obasanjo stepped down from the presidency in 2007 as one of the richest Nigerians alive. Jonathan is just one of millions of Nigerians who went to school, did well there, and acquired university degrees. In Nigeria and the world, his type, living on their qualifications, may be materially comfortable, but hardly ever phenomenally rich. But the probability is that Jonathan will, on leaving the presidency, be one of the richest men on earth. That is the way the system has been designed to work. Consideration for the well-being of the common people is not part of its equation.

However – and this is a critically important matter – we who must not cease screaming these things must have a clear purpose in our minds. We should not scream to blame or recriminate. In a written message delivered by the Arewa Consultative Forum (a major Northern leadership group) to the Yoruba Unity Forum (a major Yoruba leadership group) in Ikenne in December 2012, the ACF urged that we Nigerians should eschew recrimination in discussing Nigeria’s heavy problems. I agree absolutely. The blame game will produce nothing but hostility and more confusion. Instead, we must seek change of mind – we must seek to get our Northern brethren to bring the era of destructive errors to an end, so that all parts of Nigeria may now join hands to restructure and re-order our country, and give our country renewed strength to revive and thrive.

I once wrote in another place: “The dream of a Hausa-Fulani (or Yoruba or Igbo) imperium over Nigeria is anachronistic and unattainable. Striving for it is chasing shadows – and chasing shadows in a manner that can only generate destruction. The dream of a prosperous and great Nigeria is attainable. We can make Nigeria prosperous, and we can all prosper together in Nigeria. That is a goal well worth striving for”.

Most Nigerian nationalities support a National Conference to discuss Nigeria. The Hausa-Fulani need to do the same in the interest of us all.

January 16, 2014
Jonathan’s disdain for public opinion

Even when others lose their cool, President Jonathan remains unexcitable. Whether it is about the suppressed KPMG report of massive corruption in NNPC, injustice to Justice Salami, the worsening oil theft that threatens our economy in spite of multi dollar contract to repentant Niger Delta militants to protect the oil pipe lines, or even the ‘Oduahgate’ that has refused to go away, the president maintains that air of imperturbability. It took the leakage of his godfather’s warning letter and that of the CBN Governor to the press after four months before the president decided to react apparently because of the cost of remaining silent.

The only occasion the president gets emotional is either when talking about his dearest Patience, the ‘mother of the nation’ or his transformation agenda which he is very passionate about. And one of such few occasions came during the recent visit of PDP stakeholders from the northwest that have come to pledge their loyalty in spite of the gale of defection from PDP. It was time for the president to showcase what he considered his achievements in two years and eight months. And to the people who only hear of massive unemployment, worsening power situation after the sale of the energy sector by PDP to PDP, dilapidated roads, armed robbery, kidnapping for rituals and kidnapping for ransom (apology to Gbenga Omotoso) and other tales of woe, the president brought good tidings. His achievements within a space of two years and eight months he says remain unassailable.

With radiant smiles and a voice laden with emotion, the President repeated the phrase several times: “this administration is only two years and eight months old”. (It is actually close to five years if you add Yar’Adua unspent time). He thereafter challenged any of his critics to point out any leader in the nation’s history that could rival his level of achievements within such a short period. And from his captive PDP audience came a loud applause. I could not resist musing to myself, ‘shame to the former leaders as conspirators and Jonathan detractors especially those ‘writing letters they should not be writing’, those pretending to be democrat after annulling the most credible election in our nation’s history or those who jailed journalists for reporting the truth but now claims to be on a crusade to save the country with letter writing journalists.’

And to reassure disillusioned Nigerians who may think President Jonathan might have lost touch with reality, his ministers, the power behind the achievements, the president proudly talked about, came out to give account of their stewardship. We were told of near completion of the dualisation of Lokoja-Abuja road, the ongoing Kaduna Abuja fast train project while there was silence on all important Lagos-Ibadan, Sagamu-Benin roads probably because funds are still being sought even after a big flag-off with fanfare. I am not too sure if the finance minister celebrated economic growth which she has always done while remaining silent on development. But each minister’s presentation was greeted with loud applause by the rosy-cheeked and well endowed PDP stake holders in their well embroidered flowing agbada and babarigas.

Richard Akinjide, Shagari’s attorney general, whose daughter, the Minister of State for Abuja territory is gunning for governorship of Oyo State appeared on a Channels television programme on Saturday probably to show that all the talk about deteriorating power supply, massive unemployment, suffocating corruption in government, general insecurity, sinking PDP that is prepared to pull the country down with itself, have been greatly exaggerated after all. The chief awarded President Jonathan 80%. For him by the time the history of the country is written, Jonathan would probably turn out to be the best president to have ever emerged from Ni geria. The president, his truculent advisers like Doyin Okupe and Ahmed Gulak, Jerry Gana, Emmanuel Iwuanyawu, the ‘transformed’ Ebenezer Babatope, and all others who swear by the president’s name may be right. It may turn out that the critics of the president have been too much in a hurry to write him off. After all, he still has a whole year and four months to consolidate the gains some critics and cynics still maintain are only visible to the president, his ministers, courtiers and advisers. After all it is a known fact that one day in politics can define the fortune or misfortune of a politician.

But what worries me in the whole exercise of self-assessment and endorsement by those ex-president Obasanjo said have shielded the president from reality is the absence of the people and the total disdain for public opinion. Unlike Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and others who give pride of place to the people in a democracy, Jonathan like his godfather, Obasanjo sees himself like the Plato’s philosopher king, demonstrating at every point his disdain for the people and their opinion.

In an interview with Tell magazine, he said; ‘I am not moved by public opinion so easily, because in most cases, the public opinion may not be quite right’ This seems to have defined President Jonathan who once said he didn’t give a damn about those pestering him over non-declaration of his assets as set out in the constitution. The president for instance did not think it right to apologise to the public for imposing petroleum tax in the name of subsidy on Nigerians when he discovered he had been misled by those who presided over the theft of N1.7 trillion under the fuel subsidy regime.

President Jonathan who said it isn’t his fault that the wheel of justice grinds slowly in our nation similarly ignored public opinion over the plight of Justice Isa Salami who was visited with injustice for ruling against PDP mandate thieves. ‘Oduahgate’ on the other hand has been in the public domain for over two months. The president has not only ignored public opinion which weighed heavily against her continued stay in the cabinet as minister for aviation. Before Oduahgate, the president ignored the public demand for the implementation of the House Committee report on the fuel subsidy theft and chose to implement the report of his own appointee, Aigboje Aig Imokhuede.

Beside outward demonstration of disdain for public opinion, I think the president need to know that even if the prevailing public opinion appears to represent the views of his political adversaries, it will be foolhardy for any government that plans to succeed to ignore them. It is not self-assessment that determines the success or acceptability of government policies; it is the opinion of those for whom such policies are formulated that ultimately count.

If President Jonathan doubts that public opinion represents the will of the nation, he should just look back at how public opinion paved the way for the collapse of what the public perceived as Buhari’s tyrannical regime, Babangida fraudulent transition, Obasanjo third term agenda and even Jonathan becoming acting President when the National Assembly was forced to succumb to the pressure from the public. The irony today is that Jonathan respects neither the opinion of the public nor the resolutions of the National Assembly.

January 16, 2014
Foreign Policy in global historical perspective -1

The study of International Relations has always been subsumed within the study of History until very recently when, like political science, it became a separate discipline. Nevertheless, history has remained the foundation of a meaningful study of this important subject whose beginning was also historically determined. Serious study of International Relations began after the First World War. The loss of millions of men and wholesale destruction of property led to serious soul-searching as to how to prevent future conflicts on this grand scale. The study of politics among nations was therefore considered fundamental in avoiding another World War. The fact that the Second World War still broke out and that since 1945 we have witnessed many proxy wars that have led to the death of millions of people does not diminish the importance of the study of International Relations. Rather than throw up our hands in exasperation, scholars have fine-tuned their tools of study so as to reduce to the barest minimum, the volatility and variability of such a discipline anchored on human behaviour. One is not saying here that the role of scholars of International Relations could be decisive in the matters of war and peace because cynics might ask, “how much injection of available knowledge in the field did Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin factor into their foreign policies in the inter war years?” To many of the authoritarian and totalitarian exponents of politics of power relations in this century, diplomacy was only seen as a holding operation before countries were ready to unleash, with all its ferocity, destructive and offensive power of the state. Treaties amounted to nothing but chiffon de papier and indeed and in truth wars were politics by other means.

Coming nearer home. To what extent has the available knowledge of the imperatives of Nigeria’s foreign policy influenced and affected recent operation of Nigeria’s foreign policy? This kind of argument will miss the point of scholarship and search for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. The utility of this kind of academic enquiry would then depend on the calibre of political leadership and the prevailing factors of international politics and domestic concern of the period. Today, as a result of experience and documentation of international norms and diplomatic practice, certain ground rules have been established which while not totally preventing outbreaks of wars, have however, reduced them and, or mitigated their serious consequences.

The academic discipline of history provides a serious scholar, the broadest knowledge available to mankind. A historian must necessarily be aware of whatever revolutionary advances in the arts, philosophy, medicine, engineering and the sciences that have left their impact on man and his environment. In fact, all knowledge is historical. Man logically builds on the achievements of those who have toiled in the same field in the past. Progress in all fields of human endeavour takes knowledge and experience of the past as points of departure in the constant search for truth and knowledge. The study of history is such a vast area of academic pursuit that it is humanly impossible to master the entire field. What a historian does is to specialise and embrace a philosophy that would guide him or her in his or her studies. Historical knowledge is so fundamentally important that no society can make progress without it. One must know from where one is coming in order to know where one is going is a popular wise saying.

One of the early historians of civilization, the French man, Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778), in his book The Age of Louis XIV published in 1738 wrote that history provides

“…the comparison which a statesman or an ordinary citizen can make between the laws and customs of other countries and those of his own; this is what leads modern nations to emulate each other. The crimes and misfortunes of history cannot be too frequently pondered on, for whatever people say, it is possible to prevent both.”

The same sentiment is echoed by George Santayana when he said those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

History only repeats itself if it does at all, as a result of human folly and weakness. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (C500 BC) said, no two events can be absolutely similar just as one cannot jump into the same body of water in a stream twice because the universe is in constant state of flux. The positivist idea of history, which I subscribe to claims that in spite of the variable factors of the human element one can make predictions about the future course of events if things remain equal and firmly rooted on the knowledge of the past. It is this belief that has informed the choice of the topic of this article.

Knowing the past and recent development of Nigeria’s international relations, I can without arrogating to myself the special gift of prophecy forecast the dynamics of the future foreign policy of Nigeria. In any case historical periodisation is only for tidiness and scholastic convenience.

The difference in real life between the present, the past and the future is hardly perceptible. Albert Einstein, the father of the theory of relativity, said in 1955 that the distinction between the past, the present and the future is only an illusion, however persistent. He said, “the laws of physics as we know are time-symmetric”, they run just as well backwards as forward in time. In other words, the future exists simultaneously with the past: Isaac Newton the great physicist said the future already exists and that it can be known in advance. History is, of course, not physics and I certainly would not want to reduce such a complex field as history to mathematical exactitude but even in quantum mechanics (physics), the uncertainty principle said it clearly – the more precisely one measures what, the less precisely one could measure when. The same sentiment of time past being present in time future is echoed by the poet T.S. Eliot; when he wrote “time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future and time future is contained in time past”.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928, further explained the continuous evolution of historical events and the link between the past and the future when he wrote:

“for our duration is not merely one instant replacing another; if it were, there would never be anything but the present – no prolonging of the past into the actual, no evolution, no concrete duration. Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and swells as it advances and as the past grows without ceasing, so there is no limit to its preservation. Memory is not a facility of putting away recollections in a drawer. …in reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically in its entirety, probably it follows us at every instant”.

The course of human history is influenced by a confluence of physical, material and spiritual forces. The mistake Marxists made was to see historical development purely through the materialist prism.

Prediction of the future by the scientist or the historian is not totally different because of the variability of not just human factor but even of natural phenomena. The prediction of the future by the positivist historian is surprisingly as useful as that of a natural scientist’s futuristic anticipation.

January 16, 2014
Delay of the Okurounmu Panel’s Report

The eagerly awaited report of the Okurounmu Panel on the proposed national conference/dialogue was submitted by the Committee to the President shortly before Christmas, over two weeks ago. But it has not yet been released or made available to the public. It is still shrouded in secrecy, leading to all kinds of speculation regarding its contents. Given the urgency and importance of the proposed national dialogue, and time constraints, the release of the report to the public should no longer be delayed. A public debate on the report before the national dialogue starts is necessary. This requires that the report be released to the public at once.

Already, the report is dogged by some controversies even though it has not yet been made public. One of its key members, former Senator Asemota, claimed that he had written a minority report which the panel did not present to the President along with its own report. Seizing on this claim the Ohaneze, the Igbo cultural cum political group, has rejected the report in advance even though it may not yet have seen the report, at least not officially. But it has since transpired that no minority report was submitted by Asemota to either the advisory panel or the presidency. Asemota was at the presentation of the panel’s report to the President. If he had a minority report he should have referred to this during the presentation of the report to the President. He did not. It is possible that he wrote one and was persuaded not to submit it to the panel or make it a minority report, indicating his disagreement with some of the recommendations of the panel. If he has any fundamental differences of views over the Panel’s report, then he should be courageous enough to say so publicly. The same thing can be validly stated in respect of Professor Ben Nwabueze whose position on the idea of the national dialogue has become increasingly ambiguous. Yet, as a leading constitutional lawyer, he should play a prominent role in the work of the conference, regardless of his advancing age.

Now that the report is with the presidency, urgent action should be taken to consider the recommendations of the panel. Of course, the President and his advisers need some time to carefully consider the recommendations of the advisory panel. But it should avoid unnecessary delay. This it can do by issuing a White Paper on the report. But the presidency is unlikely to go for this option because of time constraints. A White Paper on the report would have to be considered and prepared by a cabinet committee. This could take months, and much valuable time would have been lost in the process. The alternative to a White Paper is for the presidency to try and ‘harmonise’ the report with its own views. This could be done in a matter of weeks rather than months. But both the report and the harmonised version of it should be published simultaneously so as to ascertain the views of the presidency on the report.

President Jonathan has stated repeatedly that he has an open mind about the proposed national conference and that he would not seek to influence the committee’s report one way or the other. If that is the case, then it should not be too difficult to harmonise the recommendations of the panel and the views of the presidency on how to proceed with preparations for the conference.

Basically, there are two key issues that the panel was seized with and which the presidency has to consider. The first is the modality for the conference. Such issues as the number of delegates, and the modalities for their election or selection will have to be carefully considered. There are a number of options here which the presidency will have to consider very carefully. These include the use of federal constituencies as the electoral means of electing the delegates, resort to the political parties to nominate delegates for the conference, the equal representation of the various ethnic nationalities, and the use of the existing local governments for the electoral process.

Of these, the most effective and democratic means is for the delegates to the conference to be duly elected on party basis. This will ensure that all the registered political parties participate fully in the electoral process as well as the conference itself. This will confer greater legitimacy and credibility on the delegation to the conference. If the presidency decides to nominate some delegates to the conference, this should be limited in number to not more than 10 per cent of the total number of delegates. If the number of delegates nominated by the presidency is too large, it will lead to charges that the presidency has a hidden agenda in sponsoring the conference. In any case, the number of delegates at the conference should be minimal. Otherwise it will become unwieldy like the Obasanjo 2005 national political conference.

The second critical issue is the manner in which the resolutions or decisions of the ensuing conference are to be implemented. Obviously, a legal framework will be required. A decision will have to be taken whether or not the decisions of the conference will be referred to a national referendum for ratification. It is legally doubtful whether on its own the conference can take that decision. It is not a sovereign conference and does not have sovereign powers. Even the president cannot do that without recourse to the National Assembly. Another possibility is for the outcome of the conference to be sent to the National Assembly for ratification. But given the tardy manner in which the National Assembly has handled debates on the recommendations of the 2005 conference, this is an option that could lead to a considerable delay in the ratification process. If the National Assembly is to have a role in the implementation process, then such a role should be limited, given time constraints.

All these will place an enormous electoral burden on the Independent National Electoral Commission, still grappling with preparations for next year’s crucial general elections, including the presidential election. It is doubtful that it has the administrative and financial resources to cope with such a burden. Yet, it has to be involved in the election of delegates to the conference. Such elections must take place as early as soon possible, not later than March, after which the conference should start. The conference itself should not last more than three months to allow for enough time for its ratification before next year’s crucial elections.

The electoral programme is going to be crowded and this will raise some public doubts about the timing of the national conference. In fact, some critics view the whole idea of a national dialogue now as a hoax, arguing that the time is not propitious for such a dialogue. Yet, it is imperative that some of the critical issues concerning Nigeria’s political future be addressed before next year’s elections, after which it would be difficult to get any federal government to show any serious interest in a political national dialogue. Since its independence in 1960 Nigeria has held over a dozen constitutional conferences without much progress being made in resolving its fundamental political problems. Some public scepticism about these constitutional conferences that lead no where is now justified. But there are some constitutional anomalies in the 1999 Constitution that, if possible, should be rectified at the proposed conference.

Evidently, the post-colonial political structure and institutions are not working optimally. If Nigeria is to develop its economy more rapidly, then some residual political issues have to be resolved expeditiously. This could well be the last opportunity for the nation to attempt a fundamental restructuring of its political system to reduce the constraints on its economic development. The nation needs to urgently resolve such issues as federal-state relations, the extensive powers of the federal government, the issue of state police, the role of religion in the state, rising ethnic competition for power, and national security.

But the political problems of Nigeria go beyond its imperfect constitution. To that must be added the imperfection of its leaders. It is basically one of poor leadership at all levels in the country. There is also the lack of a national consensus on ethical values, the tenets of a truly democratic society, a sense of social justice and fair play, all of which are necessary in a truly democratic society. This is why it is imperative to release the report of the Okurounmu panel now and get the whole process of restructuring the country urgently started in earnest.

January 16, 2014
Armchair Trotskys (1)

Mobs destroy and scarcely create. Be it as wild savages or unthinking herds, it has always been the preoccupation of the mob to tear down. Take the Nigerian mob for instance; by its impulsiveness, lack of forethought and restraint, want of personal and societal ethics, it expedites the destruction of everything and anything – like an unpopular policy or worn-out civilization. Whether concrete or abstract, hard-wearing or fragile, whatever object or subject becomes the fascination of the Nigerian mob is sooner annihilated.

This devastation persists as a ceaseless cycle and it is amply sustained and accelerated via brutish inclinations that characterize the Nigerian mob. Like primeval savages, the Nigerian mob lives, thinks and acts like creatures of the wild thus its unwritten code of existence: “Every man for himself in our communal jungle where only the strongest survive.”

Who are the Nigerian mob? This question expectedly excites spurious theories, allegations and conclusions about the breed aptly classifiable and identifiable with mob mentality. While many would readily finger the nation’s ruling class and its horde of loyalists, many more would categorize the impoverished breadlines as the core of the Nigerian mob.

In the flurry of generalizations, a certifiable crowd is omitted essentially because it constitutes the cult of self-appointed critics, intellectuals, moralists and the socially aware. This crowd comprises the pedestrian and infinitely tiresome breed of Nigerians who never see anything good about Nigeria; their pastime involves logging on to every social media portal with considerable traffic to continually vent and portray Nigeria as a failed enterprise.

Facebook and Twitter offer wonderful platforms for these interesting breed to say all manner of unprintable things about Nigeria and their fellow Nigerians. Another category of this breed comprises journalists, ‘social commentators’ and newspaper columnists like me. The access we enjoy to means and channels of expression is oftentimes abused by us.

It is alright to criticize but the bulk of what many of us do is classifiable as destructive sentimentality and hate-mongering. Oftentimes, we engage in sanctimonious whining, blame-casting and character assassination for reasons that border on the infantile and shame logic.

The utter lack of gumption and foresight incessantly perpetuated by this breed continually offer court jesters and media attack-mongrels of the ruling class innumerable opportunities to lash out, deploying sophistry, ad hominem and juvenile heckling in responding to critics of the ruling class they serve.

Such characters can treat the Nigerian critic and journalist with contempt given the irresponsibility and mercenariness that characterizes the latter’s criticisms of their principals. Having spent quality time as vocal parts of such crowd, media aides and attack-dogs of the ruling class respond to criticisms from a standpoint of knowledge and towering impatience.

A Special Adviser to the President or a Governor on Media Affairs for instance, can continually afford to treat their principals’ critics with disdain goaded by the notion that the latter lacks the moral justification to perform such crucial roles in the interest of the collective.

True, many a government critic on Facebook, Twitter or newspaper column is as despicable as the ruling class he condemns. Racism, gluttony, political harlotry, religious intolerance, sexism, all manners of bigotry and base sentimentality characterize Nigeria’s crowd of social critics. In several instances, members of this breed cheerily present themselves as muscles to the tyrannical ruling class they love to condemn, for a price.

This breed of Nigerian mob, in its incessant criticisms of the ruling class, conveniently forgets that the incumbent leadership is a reflection of the society from which it emerges. If we are yet to produce honest and conscientious leadership, it’s because our society is constituted by the perverse and corrupt. If bank chiefs, stock exchange bosses and civil servants we parade are more nimble at stealing than performing constructive, developmental roles, it is because the society institutionalizes and celebrates vice. And if the worst of us continually emerge as the best leaders we could ever have, it is because we are innately wired to value and elevate vile above virtue.

Sadly, rather than engage in active crusade against the perpetuation of such anomalies, the critical mob scurry on to soapboxes we mount in our living rooms, courtyards, pubs and social media to curse our luck and curse the times.

We are that pathetic part of the Nigerian mob; negligible integers a cynical reader recently identified as “armchair Trotskys.” Unlike the more servile herd whose allegiance to the ruling class is at once wild and destructive, the breed we comprise is even more vicious and symptomatic of the failure of scholarship, literacy and other contemporary advancements in civilization we ought to epitomize.

At least, the servile herd is actively involved – be it negatively or positively – according to the depth and strength of its awareness; this teeming mass of illiterate, semi-literate, unemployed and impoverished breadlines to mention a few, claim ignorance and poverty as reasons for its blind acquiescence to the tyranny of the ruling class, however, career critics and armchair Trotskys like you and I, given our touted learning and exposure, can hardly make such claims.

Today, we are shackled by vulgar sentiments of religion, rebellion and ethnicity. More worrisome is our continued enslavement by the ruling class via obscene inducements and gifts of grandeur. Consequently, we capitulate to a system by which we are psychologically broken and confined to dubious segregation and manipulative politics. The sentimental fops amongst us are programmed by rumors, innuendo and outright falsehood to shun the path to progress and tow the fast lane to destruction.

Exasperatedly, many identify the major problem afflicting us as the dearth of upright leadership mooted and drawn from the nation’s youth divide. This dearth persists due to our inability to selflessly and responsibly apply ourselves to the crusade against corrupt and selfish leadership. A more crucial dearth however, manifests by our inability to fulfill the demands of sterling citizenship.

A sterling citizenry no doubt provides the humane elements necessary to foster a benevolent leadership but we are too busy casting blames and feathering our own nests that we conveniently forget to become the good citizens we ought to become. The prospective heroes we could rely on have learnt the wisdom of keeping silent. They tactfully scoff at our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo, knowing that, as usual, we would settle for an opportunistic contract between our exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour and youth leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin aptly identifies as “the original sweetheart agreement.”

Thus we resign to the tyranny of the ruling class, courting and maligning it often in the same breath, while we anticipate and wish doom upon Nigeria. If we look inwards, we would find that the intellectual aptitudes, will and individuality of many of us are strained by disillusionment, cowardice, laziness and abject failure in our roles as patriots and citizens of humanity. Several self-styled leaders of the critical mob are currently in the jailhouse of mammon and sociopolitical expediency. Take Reuben Abati for instance, the foremost critic turned presidential aide; yesterday, he was a mob hero; today he carries on like one enslaved to power and perpetually drunk on his own saliva.

–To be continued…

January 10, 2014
Hello 2014: Some questions

THEY are all gone. Or so it seems. The pyrotechnics and the bangers. Beach parties and street carnivals. Seductive streets festooned with flowers and blinking lamps that created a huge romantic atmosphere.

They are all gone. The necromancers and prophets – of good and doom – have retired to their cocoon to await the next season of soothsaying.

Now that the revelry of the New Year seems to have died down and many of our compatriots have shrugged off the hangover of the Yuletide, it is only fit and proper to ponder the question of what 2014 holds in stock for us all. In other words, a few questions are imperative.

The President’s political future has been a subject of acrimony in political and academic circles. Dr Goodluck Jonathan is said – and many, including Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu, swear he did – to have signed an agreement to do one term in office. He denied ever signing such an agreement and dared the purveyors of the rumour to tender the document, which a Southsouth governor is said to have filed away in a vault in the inner room of his Government House. Will the unnamed governor whip out the vital document and settle this knotty question once and for all?

More importantly, will Jonathan declare his open-secret ambition to run in 2015, a seemingly ruinous venture that has caused the earthquake in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? No; that’s not quite straight. When will Jonathan launch his campaign?

And talking about the PDP. Will the party continue to be apparelled in its garb of arrogance, bearing its annoying sobriquet of the ”largest party in Africa” as if size – not sense and sensibility to those matters that nestle in the people’s hearts – is all that matters? Will PDP still continue to threaten Nigerians with 60 years of its yoke?

Or will the party continue to fight for its life, gasping for breath as the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) launches another major foray into its camp? The late Chief Moshood Abiola – I’m sure you know him – it was who once said nobody would tell a blind man that the market is over. When he ceases to hear the noise, he would pack his things and go home. Will this be the case of the PDP?

So much for “power!”. The other day when my colleagues and I were discussing the Person of the Year, I suggested the gunman. Since the Civil War, this is the first time Nigerians have witnessed so much bloodshed in the land. Evil swaggers all over the place, daring the government and the people to a confrontation. Boko Haram. Jos. Armed robberies. Kidnappings. Herdsmen versus farmers. Communal clashes. It (2013) was, in my opinion, the year of the gunman. Needless to say, I lost the argument. Will the killings continue?

There was no clear and reassuring answer to the question of Abubakar Shekau’s fate all last year. The spiritual leader of the deadly Boko Haram sect continued to issue videos, scorning the military and gloating over his men’s exploits, particularly at a time he was said to have died after suffering injuries in a battle. In fact, the authorities issued what they described as images of the man on his dying bed. With the turn of events now, didn’t somebody somewhere deceive our Intelligence chiefs? Are we set for a sure answer on Shekau this year? Is Shekau dead or alive?

Just as 2013 was closing, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to President Jonathan – so acidic and acerbic – became a public document. The details were as scary as they were scurrilous. The President replied in no less a troubling manner, even as some people felt he was timid. Besides, he referred the matter to security agents for a probe.

Will our detectives confirm or disprove the allegation that Jonathan has set up a training camp for snipers? Is it true that there are 1,000 Nigerians on a watch list? Will the list – if indeed it does exist – be leaked on the Internet? Will it be genuine or muddled up like some of those INEC lists displayed before elections? How are we sure that some other officials will not substitute some names for their perceived enemies’ names?

Elder statesman – many insist he has reduced himself to a mere Ijaw activist – Edwin Clark has written a tirade of abuse to Obasanjo. I can imagine the former President’s reply when told of the letter: “Clark; who is that? I dey laugh o.”

When will Obasanjo write another letter?

Hard as he tried last year, Agriculture Minister Akinwunmi Adesina could not get all Nigerian households to ditch the wheat bread for the cassava bread that has been the favourite at the Villa’s breakfast table ever since it was brought in, oven fresh, for the President and the privileged members of the cabinet to munch at one of those weekly meetings. Will cassava bread be available this year for ordinary Nigerians to feel the taste?

The assets of the behemoth Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have been sold. New companies have emerged. Besides, President Jonathan has promised a modest 18-hour power supply. To many Nigerians, four hours of outage is nothing; they are already having days and months – in some places – of darkness. They are waiting for Jonathan to pull this through. Will he? Will the new companies imbibe PHCN’s slothfulness?

There have been rumours of a cabinet reshuffle or disbandment. Many ministers are believed to be ministering to their political ambitions. Some are immersed in scandals. Others are merely warming their seats, genuflecting to the President to stay in office. When will Jonathan separate governance from politics and disband the cabinet this year?

Bombs have been going off in Rivers State where two major political camps have emerged. One is led by Governor Rotimi Amaechi, a former member of the PDP, who has defected to the APC, citing the President’s injustice to his people in the oil blocks’ row. The other belongs to Education Minister Nyesom Wike, a one time Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt, who has sworn to run Amaechi out of town for opposing his ambition to be governor. Wike is believed to be enjoying the backing of the First Family. Police Commissioner Mbu Joseph Mbu is said to be in his corner. The police chief denies it all, proclaiming his professionalism, which many have dismissed as doubtful. The police have sealed off the House of Assembly. Lawmakers had to sit at the old Government House to pass the budget, but there are still fears that six members of the House – there are 33 in all – are planning to impeach Amaechi, after getting the green light from Abuja.

The President has said he has no role in the Rivers crisis. Fine. Will he step in soon to stop the madness? Or will he watch as anarchy creeps in?

Some fuel merchants are facing trial for their alleged roles in the incredible subsidy scandal. There are also government officials fighting to clear their names in the pension fraud. To many, corruption has never been this vicious. Former EFCC chief Nuhu Ribadu once said if you fight corruption, don’t expect it to fold its arms; it will fight back. Will corruption kill Nigeria? Or will Nigeria defeat corruption?

Elections are coming up in Ekiti and Osun states. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chair Attahiru Jega said yesterday in Abuja that it would improve on its performance in Anambra where it failed to pass the test, even as the questions remained as old as time – late arrival of materials, muddled list of would-be voters, compromised officials, insecurity and others. The damage has been done. The post mortem is painful. With the rapacious PDP’s desperation to retake the Southwest, which it dragged to its zero level before the people rushed in to chase them away, it is only pertinent to ask: Will INEC reclaim its integrity in Ekiti and Osun?

Happy New Year!

Good luck Mikel

THE votes may have been cast. But, it is not late to put in a word on the African Footballer of the Year, which will be decided today in Lagos. My money is on Mikel Obi, the Nigeria-Chelsea prodigy.
In the race with Mikel are Yahaya Toure and Didier Drogba, who are giants in the game. Both have won the prize before. I think Mikel deserves it now. Why? He is European Champion with Chelsea (2012, Champions League), European Champion, also with Chelsea in 2013 (Europa Cup) and African Champion, with the Super Eagles in 2013.
Mikel may not have been displaying J. J. Okocha’s exceptional artistry or Nwankwo Kanu’s mastery, yet he remains as talented as the duo. His defensive role, following his managers’ instructions, has been responsible for the seemingly underplay of his talent.
I join all Chelsea fans to wish Mikel good luck tonight.

January 9, 2014
Why Nigeria is failing

We Nigerians have distorted and brutalized our country into a chaotic federation – a land of poverty and insecurity for the overwhelming majority of its citizens, a failed state that is now on the verge of breaking up. In these critical times, we ought seriously to ask ourselves the question, Why?

As far as natural resources are concerned, Nigeria is one of the most endowed countries in the world. In quality of land, agricultural capabilities, forest resources, mineral resources, aggregate human development, etc, Nigeria was already very rich before the exploitation of its petroleum wealth. With the activation of its petroleum industry from about 1970, Nigeria became one of the foremost economies at least in the Third World. Yet, today, Nigeria is, on the whole, a very poor country. For the overwhelming majority of Nigerian citizens, Nigeria is a land of tortuous conflicts, hideous crimes and insecurity, and barbarous material deprivation. Even the Nigerian federal government admits that about 70% of Nigerians live in “absolute poverty”.

What then are the causes of this terrible failure? It is true that Nigeria had a fundamental weakness from the beginning – namely, the fact that it is a country of many different nationalities. These nationalities – Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Edo, Kanuri, Nupe, Tiv, Ibibio, Ijaw, Igala, and tens of others – had existed for thousands of years before the British came and put them together as Nigeria. Each nationality has its own cultural identity, its own territory, its own image of itself, and its own ambitions and desires in the context of the modern world.

This, no doubt, is a fundamental weakness. But, is it a necessarily all- decisive weakness? Absolutely not. Comprising many different nationalities creates obvious difficulties for a country, but it does not necessarily have to lead to poverty and failure. Many countries that comprise many nationalities find ways to be prosperous and successful in the world. Britain, Switzerland and India, to mention only a few, are successful multi-nation countries.

The principal reason for Nigeria’s failure is that we Nigerians have never found some way to manage our ethnic diversity sensibly. Because we Nigerians comprise many nationalities, we have a heavy duty from the beginning to find reasonable constitutional and structural arrangements to keep our country together in reasonable harmony. We also needed from the beginning to nurture a culture of mutual respect among our nationalities, to the ends that our country would be like a family in which every one of our nationalities, whether large or small, would feel belonging and protected. Unfortunately, we have never tried to do these things with any sincerity – whether in the years before or after independence. As Nigeria stands today, the time to do these things appears to have passed – and, in any case, the willingness and sincerity needed for doing them do not exist even now.

This failure to deal appropriately with the critical, structural, needs of Nigeria started with the British – the founders of Nigeria. And this column today will focus on the British roots of Nigeria’s political disaster.

The British were not familiar with the proper kind of structure for a multi-nation country. Though their own county, Britain, had consisted of different nationalities (the English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh) for centuries, it had been ruled as one (and not as a federation) under one government – the royal government of the English king in London. When Britain became a great nation and an empire builder in North America from the 17th century, the British mostly treated the sparsely peopled territories there as empty territories and transported their own people from Britain to establish colonies there. It was not until their military successes in the First World War (1914-18) made them controllers of territories occupied by fairly strong nationalities in the Balkans and the Middle East that they had to grapple seriously with managing the affairs of countries consisting of different nationalities. But even in the Balkans and the Middle East, they and their French allies ended making a mess of the multi-nation countries which they created, and such countries (notably Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Iran, Iraq, etc), became homes of big inter-ethnic troubles, and some broke apart later. Their handling of their large Asian empire, India, followed the same pattern – and India, at its independence in 1947, had no clear or rational federal structure for the management of its great ethnic diversity.

This is the background to the British handling of the Nigerian situation. Until the end of the Second World War (1939-45), the British did nothing to give any unified structure to Nigeria. The two large chunks of Nigeria (the larger Northern Protectorate and the smaller Southern), that had been acquired separately, remained separate. Each had its own administration – and the two were connected only by the fact that the South provided the money for funding the North’s administration, and that a superior British official (a Governor) loosely held common sway over both. Nothing was done about the fact that each Protectorate comprised many different nationalities.

However, in the years following the Second World War, the British found that they had to give some structure to Nigeria. All colonial territories in Asia and Africa came out of the war demanding “independence”, and the colonial powers had to set about preparing their colonies for it. From the British consultations and conferences with Nigeria’s leading politicians, the idea of a federation of Nigeria emerged. The British response was a federation of the Northern Protectorate, the eastern half of the Southern Protectorate, and the western half of the Southern Protectorate – known respectively as the Northern, Eastern and Western Regions.

But it soon became obvious that this kind of federation was irrational and seriously unacceptable to Nigerians. The Hausa-Fulani leaders of the Northern Region, fearing domination by the vastly more literate peoples of the southern Regions, raised various objections – and even seriously considered secession or three separate countries. The various small nationalities in the Midwest, the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers, COR and the Middle Belt, fearing domination by the larger nationalities in their Regions, demanded a Midwest Region, a COR Region, and Middle Belt Region. The leaders of the large Yoruba nationality of the Western region put forth detailed proposals in 1949 for a rational federation in which Nigeria’s nationalities would be the basis for the federating units (Regions or States) of the Nigerian Federation – in which the larger nationalities would each be a federating unit, and the smaller nationalities, according to their geographical contiguity, would be grouped into federating units.

The British rejected all these proposals. From 1952, the federation of three regions went into effect. Each region had considerable freedom to manage its own affairs, and each achieved a lot for itself. But the British had different ultimate arrangements in mind. They wanted to put in charge of Nigeria a people whom they believed they could trust to protect British interests after independence and, having decided that the Hausa-Fulani of the North (who were afraid of the Southerners) would do that, they proceeded to twist the Nigerian Federation in order to make it virtually a Hausa-Fulani “empire”.

The foundation was thus laid for conflicts, decline and ultimate disintegration of Nigeria. Expect the details next week.

January 9, 2014